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Google, MOOCs, and the evolution of work and education

I mentioned in a recent post about the growing importance of Google+. Fast Company have just written a nice post on the coming domination of Google+ There are some great examples in the piece including this one:

Google Plus’s Ganesha-like arms can handle all of your company’s communications–if you let it. My buddy Andy Wilson, for example, runs an e-discovery company called Logik. He has swapped out everything with Google Plus. Instead of Yammer, employees post to their “work” circle. Instead of Skype, employees use Google Hangouts for cross-coast meetings and calls. Instead of Eventbrite, they use Google Plus events.

To give you another example of this I’m taking an MIT MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) called Learning Creative Learning. Aside from the course Website everything else is leveraging Google tools. The videos of the lectures are streamed via a Google+ hangout and stored on YouTube. The announcements and materials for the course are on a Google+ community. There are 24,000 students taking the course and in a great innovation we’ve all been divided into virtual groups (which appear to be tied to our local timezones). Most of these Groups are setting up their own Google+ communities for communication.

There are 24,000 students taking this course (or signed up at any rate). And most of them will use the Google tools and bring them with them into their workplaces. I suspect because of the small group format more will complete it than other similar courses. And I’d expect it to become a standard feature on other MOOCs. I started using Google+ in my own teaching last year and found huge value in it.

Work is changing and evolving. Traditional education is not about to disappear over night. It will change and evolve. Eventually we might all get to the same point as Luis Suarez and instead of queuing for better InBox tools, we might just find better ways of working.

Founder / CEO Tinstring
I build systems and companies, deliver infrastructure, create and enable strategy. I help people to do their jobs better and improve how they work with their customers. I am passionate about building better organisations and better ways of working.